A ‘Thank You’ from the Cicetekelo Youth Project

Association Pope John 23rd (APJ23) has been working in Zambia since 1986, providing assistance to the most vulnerable. APJ23 runs well established programs in the fields of Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVCs), disability, nutrition and social enterprise.

Cicetekelo Youth Project (CYP) is one of the programs under APJ23 and focuses on retrieving children from the streets of Ndola, Zambia and looking after the OVCs who are more at risk of ending up living or working in the streets.

In June 2020 APJ23 requested from The Papal Foundation a COVID 19-Emergency Relief Grant to support the program. During the period covered by the requested COVID-19 Emergency Relief grant, there were 242 children and youth under CYP programs:

• 80 children and youth who lived in the two CYP Residential Homes in Nkwazi and Misundu
  120 children who lived in their homes and attend the project’s school and activities as non-residents and who were still supported nutritionally, even when the schools were closed after the pandemic was at its peak.
• 42 children and youth living and working in the streets were retrieved from the town centre by Ndola’s Local Authorities and given emergency shelter at CYP’s Centres
• The Mission Fund grant allowed the purchase of food and groceries necessary for the daily running of the essential services to the assisted 242 OVCs in the period September 2020- February 2021.

Clothes for the children were bought together with 46 bed sheets and 41 towels for the resident children. Disposable masks and cloth masks were bought and supplied to all children and centres’ workers in order to respect all COVID-19 prevention measures.

Thanks to the Mission Fund grant, so many children in Zambia were fed, clothed and protected in Zambia during the height of the pandemic. Thank you for helping improve the lives of some of the most vulnerable in Africa!